Electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid vehicles (HV), which are sometimes known as plug-in hybrid vehicles, are provided with, as a motive power source, rechargeable batteries (for example, secondary batteries such as lithium-ion batteries or nickel metal hydride batteries) that are large in capacity and are rechargeable. Hereinafter, a vehicle that is provided with this type of rechargeable batteries will be referred to simply as an ‘electric vehicle’.
As electric vehicles have become increasingly popular, employing electric vehicles for uses other than as a means of transportation (for example, using them as a nighttime power supply, or as a source of emergency power) has been proposed (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 to 3). In conjunction with this, the method of predicting usage patterns of household electrical appliances, and controlling the operation of each electrical appliance based on the prediction results has been proposed (see, for example, Patent Document 4). In addition, technology related to the present invention is disclosed in Patent Documents 5 to 7.